Carnegie Mellon, Highmark and Allegheny Health Network have partnered to create the Disruptive Health Technology Institute (DHTI), which aims to increase the affordability, simplicity and accessibility of health care.

"This institute is built around the mission of researching and deploying new technologies to help reduce health care costs and improve outcomes for patients," said CMU Provost and Executive Vice President Mark S. Kamlet.

"The CMU innovation ecosystem can be deployed with laser-like focus to develop the technologies that will help patients' health and finances," said Alan Russell (pictured above), the Highmark Distinguished Professor in the College of Engineering's Institute for Complex Engineered Systems who will oversee daily DHTI operations. "The U.S. health care tab reached $2.8 trillion last year, but we believe our new institute will help reduce those costs and improve quality for all consumers.''

You may think the best place to build a wind farm would be on the Great Plains, and the prime spot for a solar plant would be in the Southwest. But that's not the case according to CMU researchers.

The main reason to build wind and solar plants is to reduce air pollution and carbon dioxide emissions, so building in Ohio, West Virginia and western Pennsylvania, where alternative energy sources replace electricity generated by coal plants, is a better bet.

That's the conclusion of a paper, titled "Regional Variations in the Health, Environment and Climate Benefits of Wind and Solar Generation," authored by four CMU experts from the Center for Climate and Energy Decision Making. The paper by Kyle Siler-Evans, Ines Lima Azevedo, M. Granger Morgan and Jay Apt appears this week in the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

To comply with the City of Pittsburgh's All Hazards Plan, Environmental Health & Safety (EH&S) will conduct evacuations of CMU's five high-rise buildings on Friday, July 5.

The evacuation schedule is as follows:

Mellon Institute, 9 a.m.;

Gates/Hillman, 10 a.m.;

Doherty Hall, 11 a.m.;

Wean Hall, 1 p.m.; and

Hamerschlag Hall, 2 p.m.

An evacuation announcement will be made over the building's public address system, followed by the sounding of the fire alarm. Once the fire alarm sounds, occupants should quickly leave the building via your nearest exit and assemble in the building's designated assembly area, which can be found online.

Failure to leave a building when the fire alarm sounds is a violation of a City of Pittsburgh ordinance and can result in a fine and court appearance.